“Fuck you,” I said, and headed for the door.
I stopped immediately after an anguished cry came from the cell.
“Wait!”
We both turned and walked back to the bars.
“Do you promise to give me that old woman if I tell you everything?”
He was now sweating and looked desperate. Bernie and Linda joined us back in the room.
“Yes, I promise,” I said.
“Harry, you can’t,” Linda gasped.
“Linda, if you or Bernie don’t want to be part of it, leave the room. This is happening whether you like it or not.”
They both stayed, standing silently behind me. I was starting to surprise myself, but the game of life had changed. I knew that even one sign of weakness could make him clam up again.
“You’re not lying, are you? You will give her to me?”
”Look, that crazy old bat tried to kill us. We handcuffed her, taped her up, and I’ve been dragging her around by her hair. She means nothing to us. If you don’t believe us, then we’ll turn around and walk out now. Makes no difference to me. Tell us or that’s it,” Jack replied.
The man dropped his head, ran his fingers through his hair, then looked straight at me. “I’ve got to kill myself.”
“Go on,” I said.
“I’ve got to kill myself as soon as possible.”
He stopped and looked up at me in expectation.
“Come on, there’s more to it than that. Spit it out. You’ve got twenty seconds.”
It didn’t make sense. If the simple goal was suicide, then nothing was stopping him.
“Oh, what have I got to lose?” He continued in a slow, cold voice. “I want to kill myself. The final unstoppable goal is to kill myself. But I cannot kill myself until I kill another person.” He rubbed his face with both hands, “…kill one, kill yourself, kill one, kill yourself… I must use whatever means necessary to do this, and I have to do it as soon as possible.”
A stunned silence followed. I was trying to register what I had just heard.
“You don’t have any other option?” Jack asked.
“There is no other option. This is the only way. Now, please, give me the old woman.”
“I believe him. I mean, it fits exactly with what we have already seen. Right?” Bernie said.
“Can you tell us anything else? How long have you wanted to do this?” I asked.
“No. I’ve been honest with you. My objective is simple.”
I turned and walked past Jack, Bernie, and Linda, into the office area. The man shouted for us to come back and honour our promises, but Jack locked the door. Muffled sounds of screaming and the rattling of the cell door continued for a couple of minutes, then stopped abruptly.
We sat down on the floor and tried to make sense of what had just happened.
“Harry, you could have told us you had no intention of sacrificing Maureen,” Linda said.
“The whole act with him had to look genuine or he would realise that we were bluffing. These people may be focussed on killing, but they’re not completely stupid. Both of them have tried to manipulate us in order to kill.”
“You still should have told us. We would have been convincing. Next time, don’t scare us like that,” Bernie replied.
“There won’t be a next time. We know that Maureen and that guy in the cell wanted to kill someone. The security guard killed the steward, then himself. There’s a pattern.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve seen it yourself, Bernie. Since we landed, everyone we have met has tried to kill. No matter how convincing they have sounded, they can’t be trusted. So yes, I would sacrifice one of them if it meant our safety.”
“We need to plan how to handle these situations in the future,” Jack said, backing me up. “People could be armed, strong, or sneak up on us, giving us only seconds to respond. I think we should go for a zero tolerance approach.”
“We can’t just start shooting people on sight,” Linda said, shaking her head.
“The people with a pulse that we have come across so far have appeared completely normal, until they managed to find an opportunity to kill. We can’t afford to let them get close enough,” Jack replied, looking sympathetically towards her.
“There is one way,” Bernie exclaimed, “we don’t have to shoot if we see two or more people together who are alive.”
“What do you mean, Bernie?” I asked.
“Think about it,” he explained, “if they all need to kill someone before they can kill themselves, they are more likely to kill another person than travel with them. So far, we’ve only come across individuals who were looking for somebody to kill, or who were locked away.”
“If we see two people alive who are thinking like the man in the cage, then the chances are they’d be trying to strangle each other. So, do we need to split up so we are not seen in a group?” Jack said.
“No. It wouldn’t make a difference, would it? It certainly didn’t stop Maureen or that guy behind the door. But if others are out there that have worked out what is going on, then they’ll recognise that we are not trying to murder each other. We should stay together,” I replied.
“How did all of this happen? We know what they are trying to do, but why are they doing this?” Bernie was beginning to sound distraught.
“He said it was the only objective he ever had, that obviously isn’t true, but he believed it. So sometime in the last day, everybody here was affected. It isn’t that much of a stretch to think that the loss of communications might have something to do with it,” I replied.
“But how could this happen?”
It was an impossible question, and I certainly didn’t have the answer.
“I don’t know, Bernie, we’re all working on the same information as you here,” Jack said.
His tone was slightly sarcastic, and although unhelpful, it was understandable in our current position. A short period of awkward silence followed.
“Ninety-nine percent of the people we have seen are already dead. Besides the guard who approached the plane, we have only come across a man who was already locked up and a woman who walked over from a nature reserve. How far do you think this has spread? Could the city be affected?” Linda said, sounding close to breaking point.
I couldn’t help but imagine the scenes in front of the terminal when this deathly impulse took hold of its victims. There must have been stabbings, shootings, suicides, blood and screaming everywhere, everyone with the same purpose.
A thought struck me.
“Jack, those tweets you received right after we landed…”
“Yeah, what about them?”
“They were probably from people trying to draw you in after finding the original message about coming to New York.”
“Why me though?”
“I doubt it was you specifically, I imagine they would have tried anyone they could find after searching twitter for New York.”
Jack was still looking at me blankly.
“Think about it. There was somebody in a wheelchair, a guy in a hospital, and a farm owner. All were in a similar situation to the man in the cell — unable to get their hands on another human. They were in remote locations or unable to move anywhere without putting themselves at risk.”
“I was being stalked on social media, Jesus.”
“Remote locations? Let me have a look,” Bernie said, as he quickly shuffled towards Jack.
Jack pulled out his phone and briefly checked it.
“I’m not picking up any networks, here you go.” He passed the device to Bernie.
As he read the tweets, Bernie’s mouth slowly opened wide.
“What is it, dear?” Linda asked.
“The addresses in the tweets… one of them is in Manhattan. Worse still, the farm is in upstate New York!”